Superman's Dead
10-30-2011, 11:54 AM
Dungeon Defenders Review
Title: Dungeon Defenders
Platform: iOS, Android, PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Developer: Trendy Entertainment (http://trendyent.com/)
Publisher: Reverb Publishing (http://www.reverbpublishing.com/)
ESRB: Everyone 10+
MSRP: $14.99 PC (http://amzn.com/B005VFHOOE) & PSN, 1200 Microsoft Points
Editor: Superman's Dead
What's Hot: 4-player tower defense co-op!!; creative, colorful, sprawling maps; replayability/character advancement
What's Not: Difficulty scaling can make levels a chore; Lack of variation in traps/enemies
Four young heroes-in-training are horseplaying in a library while their older more powerful kin are away in some distant land. Wouldn't you know it, they knock over a crystal that, upon being shattered, unleashes a horde of darkness in and around the castle. With no one else to defend their home, they become Dungeon Defenders!
Quick nitpick: in every tower defense game, there's always an initial map with a small amount of doors and pathways. The last map, in contrast, is usually enormous with tons of entrances and open space. Why doesn't everyone just hang out in that first place? Just stop...stop going to bigger places.
Dungeon Defenders lets you choose one of four possible classes for your dungeon defending needs: the Squire, the Apprentice, the Huntress, and the Monk. Each of them have 4 unique towers/traps/defenses and two unique hero powers, with each hero bringing something different to the group.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6038/6292033497_12d3d022ba_z.jpg
Things are not going well.
In each level, there's a lot to do. You can get up close and personal with enemies, dispatching them and holding choke points on your own. You can use ranged attacks with every class but the Squire, taking out monsters from afar. You can make sure that none of your turrets or barriers fall to enemy attacks, and run around the map repairing and upgrading. In later levels there are so many paths for the enemies to take that there's no one "right" way to defend your crystals, so there are plenty of viable options. When you're struggling against a horde of monsters, it can be thrilling to coordinate the defense with three other people: maybe the Monk throws up a Healing Aura so that the Squire doesn't die while he's wading into enemies, the Apprentice builds barricades behind him to catch any who get through, and the Huntress fires wildly into the fray. Each 'Act' has a boss at the end of it, who is accompanied by never-ending waves of enemies until you take it down.
The maps are pretty, all bright colors and classic fantasy tropes. Deciding where you want to defend can be puzzling at first, but that's all part of the draw of the genre. A solo Apprentice may defend a different area than a solo Monk, and any group of two or more heroes would likely pool their talents in a different area as well. When you're hopping around with friends, trying to save your crystals in the initial waves before you have a lot of mana, the game is a fun romp.
When things get tougher later on in levels, however, there's a problem. By the last few waves of each level, you usually have your defenses in place. Each level as a limit of how many turrets/traps you can place, measured in "Defensive Units". Each defense is worth a different amount of DUs, and once you hit your cap you have to sell defenses to build more. So once your defenses are in place, you're dug in and all of your mana is spent on upgrading/repairing current defenses. The amount of enemies per wave and their strength is based on the number of players and their respective levels. On an initial playthrough of the last level of the second "Act", upwards of 1,800 enemies were attacking. By the time we'd killed 1,200 of them, we were positive we were going to win. But we had another 600 monsters to kill.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6047/6292553498_35be837ef6_z.jpg
No pants, though. Dungeon Defenders don't need pants.
Once you've played all of the maps, the game has a problem with freshness. There's a 70 level cap for players, but you unlock your last tower at level 15 and last ability at level 20. You've fought against every type of enemy in the game well before the halfway point: they only get ranked up and gain resistances to elements that make them much harder to kill. If you want to hit your cap with each of the 4 classes you will see the same recolors of Goblins, Orcs, and Drow archers many many times. Because there are so many enemies, these enemies drop a lot of loot. Most of this loot is useless. You can pick through the dozens of items littering the floor after a wave, but will likely find nothing as good as or better than the items you already have. The best items in the game come from killing bosses, and it's hard for anything else to match up.
Each map has 4 difficulty levels, and also a Challenge you can complete for extra experience points and achievements. There's a lot you can do to level each of your 4 characters up to 70, and get the mana you need to upgrade your weapons and armor to godly levels. But through it all, you will have the same 4 defenses and two abilities, and be facing the same ten types of enemies.
Dungeon Defenders is a fun game in small doses, before the incredible onslaught of enemies gets boring rather than challenging. The four-player co-op is a serious draw, especially playing on Hard or Insane difficulty. If you like MMO-esque character progression there's something for you here, with the drive to get a character outfitted for tower strength or DPS over the course of the 70 levels of advancement you have. For some people that isn't enough, and the drive to Defend Dungeons can dry up pretty fast.
Score: 3.5 out of 5 CoGs
http://www.colonyofgamers.com/images/CoG3_5.png
Superman's Dead says, "Check this game out if you have friends who love tower defense or quick hack-n-slash RPG fun, but it may not have legs if you aren't playing with people you like"
*Note - Review based upon the PC version of game
Title: Dungeon Defenders
Platform: iOS, Android, PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Developer: Trendy Entertainment (http://trendyent.com/)
Publisher: Reverb Publishing (http://www.reverbpublishing.com/)
ESRB: Everyone 10+
MSRP: $14.99 PC (http://amzn.com/B005VFHOOE) & PSN, 1200 Microsoft Points
Editor: Superman's Dead
What's Hot: 4-player tower defense co-op!!; creative, colorful, sprawling maps; replayability/character advancement
What's Not: Difficulty scaling can make levels a chore; Lack of variation in traps/enemies
Four young heroes-in-training are horseplaying in a library while their older more powerful kin are away in some distant land. Wouldn't you know it, they knock over a crystal that, upon being shattered, unleashes a horde of darkness in and around the castle. With no one else to defend their home, they become Dungeon Defenders!
Quick nitpick: in every tower defense game, there's always an initial map with a small amount of doors and pathways. The last map, in contrast, is usually enormous with tons of entrances and open space. Why doesn't everyone just hang out in that first place? Just stop...stop going to bigger places.
Dungeon Defenders lets you choose one of four possible classes for your dungeon defending needs: the Squire, the Apprentice, the Huntress, and the Monk. Each of them have 4 unique towers/traps/defenses and two unique hero powers, with each hero bringing something different to the group.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6038/6292033497_12d3d022ba_z.jpg
Things are not going well.
In each level, there's a lot to do. You can get up close and personal with enemies, dispatching them and holding choke points on your own. You can use ranged attacks with every class but the Squire, taking out monsters from afar. You can make sure that none of your turrets or barriers fall to enemy attacks, and run around the map repairing and upgrading. In later levels there are so many paths for the enemies to take that there's no one "right" way to defend your crystals, so there are plenty of viable options. When you're struggling against a horde of monsters, it can be thrilling to coordinate the defense with three other people: maybe the Monk throws up a Healing Aura so that the Squire doesn't die while he's wading into enemies, the Apprentice builds barricades behind him to catch any who get through, and the Huntress fires wildly into the fray. Each 'Act' has a boss at the end of it, who is accompanied by never-ending waves of enemies until you take it down.
The maps are pretty, all bright colors and classic fantasy tropes. Deciding where you want to defend can be puzzling at first, but that's all part of the draw of the genre. A solo Apprentice may defend a different area than a solo Monk, and any group of two or more heroes would likely pool their talents in a different area as well. When you're hopping around with friends, trying to save your crystals in the initial waves before you have a lot of mana, the game is a fun romp.
When things get tougher later on in levels, however, there's a problem. By the last few waves of each level, you usually have your defenses in place. Each level as a limit of how many turrets/traps you can place, measured in "Defensive Units". Each defense is worth a different amount of DUs, and once you hit your cap you have to sell defenses to build more. So once your defenses are in place, you're dug in and all of your mana is spent on upgrading/repairing current defenses. The amount of enemies per wave and their strength is based on the number of players and their respective levels. On an initial playthrough of the last level of the second "Act", upwards of 1,800 enemies were attacking. By the time we'd killed 1,200 of them, we were positive we were going to win. But we had another 600 monsters to kill.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6047/6292553498_35be837ef6_z.jpg
No pants, though. Dungeon Defenders don't need pants.
Once you've played all of the maps, the game has a problem with freshness. There's a 70 level cap for players, but you unlock your last tower at level 15 and last ability at level 20. You've fought against every type of enemy in the game well before the halfway point: they only get ranked up and gain resistances to elements that make them much harder to kill. If you want to hit your cap with each of the 4 classes you will see the same recolors of Goblins, Orcs, and Drow archers many many times. Because there are so many enemies, these enemies drop a lot of loot. Most of this loot is useless. You can pick through the dozens of items littering the floor after a wave, but will likely find nothing as good as or better than the items you already have. The best items in the game come from killing bosses, and it's hard for anything else to match up.
Each map has 4 difficulty levels, and also a Challenge you can complete for extra experience points and achievements. There's a lot you can do to level each of your 4 characters up to 70, and get the mana you need to upgrade your weapons and armor to godly levels. But through it all, you will have the same 4 defenses and two abilities, and be facing the same ten types of enemies.
Dungeon Defenders is a fun game in small doses, before the incredible onslaught of enemies gets boring rather than challenging. The four-player co-op is a serious draw, especially playing on Hard or Insane difficulty. If you like MMO-esque character progression there's something for you here, with the drive to get a character outfitted for tower strength or DPS over the course of the 70 levels of advancement you have. For some people that isn't enough, and the drive to Defend Dungeons can dry up pretty fast.
Score: 3.5 out of 5 CoGs
http://www.colonyofgamers.com/images/CoG3_5.png
Superman's Dead says, "Check this game out if you have friends who love tower defense or quick hack-n-slash RPG fun, but it may not have legs if you aren't playing with people you like"
*Note - Review based upon the PC version of game